


Advent Calendar

by possessed-bylight (free_pirate)



Series: and a swelling rage [2]
Category: The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Basically all the stuff tagged in the original fic, King Fili, M/M, plus blatant misuse of holidays for feels
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-08
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-03 23:48:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 12
Words: 5,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1074485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/free_pirate/pseuds/possessed-bylight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>December 2013. A set of 25 holiday prompts set in the world of 'and a swelling rage'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1. Mistletoe

**Author's Note:**

> So this is a set of 25, supposed to be updated daily. As of now I'm a bit behind (I have today's done but I have four earlier days to fill, for example) but I'll get them posted up here in order. You can also catch them over at festivefilifeels on Tumblr. They're just short ficlets with a holiday prompt and holiday/winter theme. There are some spoilers for the original fic, which you can find in this same series.
> 
> In any case, enjoy~
> 
> This one is early in the timeline, pre-quest, and happens just after the memory that was described in Chapter Four.

The Long Hall in Ered Luin is hung with decorations. The year has been a prosperous one, and for the first time in a long time they will have a feast for Yule and another for Durin’s Day. Kili is especially proud to be able to say he has been asked to go with the hunting party (Fili carefully doesn’t mention that he has, too, and Kili just naturally assumes that Fili will share in his glory instead of making his own). 

Their small party returns to the hall after a day spent in the wood, two deer and a pheasant between them. It isn’t nearly enough for the number of dwarves in town, not to mention travelers (Thorin, in an act of almost suspicious generosity, declared that all were welcome). They will have to return the next day, but Kili is flushed, eyes dancing with the excitement of the hunt, the exhilaration of it.

Fili enjoys watching him like this. He enjoys the way Kili is happy, the way he is much freer with himself, with his casual touches. After what happened a few weeks ago in front of the fire, while the snow roared outside and their mother wasn't home, Fili is almost breathlessly anticipating what Kili might do in the thrill of the hunt.

He is not disappointed. When the door shuts behind the other dwarves, heading home to their families now the job is done, Kili flicks his eyes up towards the rafters suggestively. It's a small movement, mostly nervous - Fili watches him for a moment, smile tugging at him, and then follows his gaze. 

The rafters are hung with plants, both used for decoration and their scent. There are bundles of pine and between them, clumps of red and yellow berries with large green leaves. 

“Mistletoe,” Kili says conspiratorially. Fili barely contains the roll of his eyes. This was something Kili had never let go; when they were small, in towns of men, they often heard stories of plants with magical properties. Men were a superstitious lot, and Fili hadn’t set much store by them. Kili, however, spent much of his early life sticking hard and fast to the descriptions he’d heard women chattering about in the markets. 

Mistletoe was one of these, apparently able to magically bring people together. When Kili repeated it after the first time he heard, his small nose wrinkled up and Fili laughed at him. 

Now, Fili casts his gaze back down to Kili’s face; his brother is looking at him with intent, and Fili wants to tell him not here, not where people might walk in any moment and catch them, not where Thorin might find out. But they aren’t nearly comfortable enough to talk about whatever's happening between them, and before he can protest Kili is moving into his space, tangling his hands slowly in Fili's hair and tilting his head. 

There is a moment of hesitation, a moment where they're just breathing each other's air, and then Kili is sealing his mouth over Fili's, melting against him as soon as it's clear he isn’t going to be pushed away. Fili’s hands come up to grip Kili’s shoulders, hold him where he is, and he gives in to the slide of Kili’s tongue against his and the firm press of his mouth, the tug at his hair whenever Kili wants more. 

Fili's only just warming up to it when he hears footsteps in the snow outside and pulls away abruptly. 

“What...?” Kili asks, breathless, and then the door swings open. They put another few inches of space between them, Fili fighting down the flush that he can feel heating his face and Kili rubbing his hand over his mouth like there's evidence to get rid of. 

“Ah, there you are,” Thorin says with a small frown. “Your mother's going to start asking after you if you don’t get yourselves home.” It's a gruff statement, and he’s obviously oblivious to what was just going on; he lingers just a moment, looking between them, before shutting the door again. 

Fili lets out a shaky laugh, running his fingers through his hair, and Kili takes a deep breath. After another few seconds of awkwardly trying to collect themselves, Fili leads the way out of the Long Hall, hoping that the cold will help tamp down the heat rushing through him, the embarrassment of almost getting caught out and the comfortable weight of his brother against him.


	2. 2. Gingerbread

When they were small, the kitchen in their small cottage would be bustling with activity around the Yuletide. There was a different relative there every day, and it was this way that Kili learned this was a time for family. 

Dis would make a great many things and Kili and Fili would help her with on occasion (when she allowed their clumsy hands into her kitchen). Sometimes they even got Thorin to attempt, no matter how often he insisted that he simply wasn't made for it. 

One of Kili's favorite things was her gingerbread. It was an old recipe, and none did it as well as his mother. She gave great baskets of it away when they had the means, even though she probably could have made quite a profit selling it.

When they are settled and the cold weather descends on the mountain, Kili misses that sense of family. The space where Thorin used to be leaves them all lost, dancing around each other like they didn't quite fit together anymore. Not to mention that they are hardly together anymore anyway. The hole Thorin created was driven wide by the shadow of the mountain, responsibilities and worries that shouldn't be theirs.

Dis gives the kitchens her recipe for gingerbread on Kili's request. She is hesitant at first because it has been passed down from mother to daughter for as long as anyone can remember, never written down, but Kili eventually convinces her to give up her secret. When it rolls out of the oven, Kili is waiting next to Bombur to sample it, to gain back just a little of the taste of home. 

But of course he is disappointed. Though it is her recipe, this isn't his mother's baking. There is something missing from them, something vital, but Kili orders a batch large enough for the feast anyway because it feels like the right thing to do. 

After the feast, Dis spends a week pleasantly flushed with the many compliments her recipe receives, and Kili smiles for her, congratulates her, and gives her all the praise the others have already said. 

It isn't her recipe, he knows. It's him.


	3. 3. Mulled Wine

The first time they are allowed to have mulled wine at a feast is the Durin’s Day shortly after Kili’s majority. Fili thinks it woefully unfair that he had to wait for his little brother to come of age, but he knows that met with Kili’s betrayed stare he would wish he had.

So he waits. The first time he and Kili are poured glasses of the sweet, spiced drink, they both run the mugs under their noses for a moment, laughing at each other as they do it. They are so full of food and happy that the celebrations are going to plan, that Thorin is at least giving off the air of having fun, and that no one is paying any mind to the way they are touching each other more than necessary.

Kili is the first, ever the more adventurous. He raises his mug to his lips and, staring Fili down as he does so, takes the largest gulp of wine Fili has ever seen. He coughs and sputters and Fili laughs at him. Kili laughs at himself.

Fili takes his own glass a bit more gently, only sipping at it until he can roll the flavor around in his mouth. He decides he likes it instantly, and that if he’d been given the choice to drink this years ago a good deal more pocket change would have gone to waste.

It is a tradition now since it is his favorite. All feasts in the mountain are accompanied by mulled wine. Sometimes the spices are changed due to season and availability, but Fili finds he likes the winter wines the best. More than once he’s tried to get Kili to participate in the revelry with him, but of course Kili is distant, has been since the day Thorin died, and Fili will never been able to reconcile the Kili he knew on the eve of the battle to the one he awoke to.

Now, as he looks over to Kili, trying to smile around the brim of his cup, he knows that Kili’s only drinking mead and leaving the hot wine far, far away. There is a lightning flash of sadness that Fili tries to drown, but it persists; is Kili so utterly through with everything having to do with him that he’d deny himself so ardently?

Yes. The answer is yes. Fili knows his brother, or at least knew him at one point, and this is exactly how Kili acts when he’s trying to forget.

Fili sighs to himself, sips unhappily at his cup and tries to look at least a bit entertained by the songs and tales going on in the hall below. It’s going to be a very long night.


	4. 4. Snowfall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like something like this already exists in one of the chapters. Shhhh just go with it. ;)

Kili doesn't often find himself on the battlements. He doesn't like the way it feels there, doesn't like that he can lean over and watch the rebuilding of the front gate so many feet below.

More than any of that he hates that Dale is lurking there, the hulking ruins that should have been carted away a long time ago. With the dragon in residence it wasn't really an option, and now there are talks of rebuilding - talks which, if Kili is perfectly honest, he's not all that fond of attending.  
  
Even in the cold dusk it looks like the ruins could still be smoldering. Everything in the valley outside the mountain is dead, black and crisp. It's not natural.

But even more than those ruins, he hates what is directly beyond it. The fields beyond the ruined city are the site of the battle, and even looking over the ground now he fancies that he can see where Thorin fell, can feel the ache in his arm even though he knows that it has long since been returned to working order.

When the snow starts, it isn't gentle. The wind whips through the crenellations, whipping the edges of his coat around him, tossing his hair aside to bite at his ears and the tip of his nose.

The cold has settled into Kili's bones by the time that the ground has the first light covering of it, and he stays standing there until there is a glittering white blanket over the battlefield, over the ruins, over everything. It's several hours by the time he moves, and he hardly realizes it - the magical effect falling snow has makes everything quiet, still, and it covers the ugliness below. It almost looks clean again.


	5. 5. Traditions

Their culture relies heavily on tradition. Thorin told him as much when he was young, when he was still learning. The training never seemed to be enough, and Fili doesn’t think that he truly understood until this weight settled on his shoulders.

Everything is dictated based on the actions of those that came before. Even though he is King Under the Mountain, in theory able to bring about any change he sees fit, he is bound by indefinitely many rules that he cannot change lest he lose all respect and credibility. Even his suggestions, harmless enough with a strong backing, have his small council balking.

Fili's favorite traditions have to do with the way feasts are conducted (though he doesn’t like having to be the one to open them all the time). They have to do with holidays and merrymaking, because those are the most fun and also the least painful to carry out.

But for every well-loved tradition there are at least a dozen that Fili would abolish if he were given the power to do so. Not for the first time, he wishes that he had some time to see Thorin do these things. In a way, all of his careful training and preparation had been blind. Thorin had never been King, though he was raised by one. He didn’t know some of the most ridiculous inner workings of the process, and therefore never taught them to Fili. Even Balin was blissfully unaware of some of his duties.

Half of him only wishes that Thorin was King first so that he could see his uncle flounder and stumble through his first year of rule. In a way this was a thought used only to make himself feel better about his own abilities, which he thought were severely lacking. The other half is practical, less self-depreciating but definitely more selfish; if Thorin had survived, if Fili had been there to block the blow that brought Thorin to his knees, he would have had a little more time with his brother the way things were.

Standing here, near the end of the first year of his reign with his brother sulking half a city away, he’s never felt so far from Kili. Some days it seems like they’ll never be like they were, never talk like they used to or even be able to stand in the same room without something hanging unsaid between them.

Making his brother stop hiding wouldn’t be proper. He wants Kili to come to him on his own, but even that seems like a far-away, impossible occurrence. Taking time away from the kingdom to reforge a lost sense of camaraderie with his brother was about as far-flung from the traditions of their forefathers than he'd ever considered before, but if he kept being denied the chance to explain himself, to make things right, he was going to end up causing a lot of grief for his small council.


	6. 6. Bells

At Yuletide, the High Markets begin to cater to the season. They sell more toys than ever before, clothing in deeper reds made out of soft, cozy silks and velvets. There are small trinket shops selling all manner of shiny baubles and a host of other things not usually sold within the mountain.

One shop near the middle of the market sells bells. They are small, not at all like the large ones being erected in Dale to mirror the ones that heralded Smaug's coming. It’s delicate metalwork and it needs a gentle hand to make. The sound the bells make when their clappers strike against the metal shell is pure and beautiful. Kili's doing his routine sweep of the markets when he finds this stand, attention drawn by the sound of the bells as the merchant’s small dwarfling rings them gleefully. 

He remembers, suddenly, a Yuletide long ago. It feels close to a thousand years when the space is measured by what’s happened since, but he can recall the details as though it was a week passed. 

He and Fili were small. Kili was a babe, still running through the halls of their cottage on chubby legs chasing his big brother. Fili seemed so much larger, though he was only a child himself. That was the essence of Kili’s life, it seemed; always chasing his bigger, more important brother. 

It was their first hard winter. Thorin had been gone most of the fall, toiling away in some town of men to bring some comfort for his people, but when winter set in and the host of dwarves returned, it was hardly enough. Kili remembers the cold, remembers the snow falling hard and thick outside and being confined to the house because Dis hadn’t yet had time to make them clothing more suitable for the colder weather, working her fingers to the bone doing the washing and sewing for the shop she’d taken work at. 

There was an awful sense of being caged that winter, and Kili remembers sitting with his brother by the large fire, warming their toes and pressed close together to make it warmer. Every day, Fili would ask their mother when Thorin was returning, and every day Dis told him it would be soon. 

When the party of dwarrow finally arrived home, it was on a snowy night. Fresh powder was falling on crusted ice, and the way the wind was blowing there was hardly any way to see more than a few feet to either side. 

At first, there was nothing; no sound, the world quiet and soft around the edges as the snow coated everything once more. Kili watched out of the window as he curled into Fili's side, and when he heard the sound of bells he almost believed it was imagined, a suggestion of a sound. 

It grew louder, closer, and before long there were voices; Dis moved to the door and watched from the window set into the wood as the group emerged from the trail. 

They'd tied bells to their horses so as not to get lost in the blizzard. It was a good-natured solution; everyone in the party was happy to be returning home for the Yuletide, and it was a soft and effective way to keep each other in sights, so to speak. Of course, when Kili was small he understood none of the reasoning; all he knew was the sound of those bells, and then Thorin was pushing open the door, shedding all of his heavy layers. 

Dis made them wait until he was no longer soaked through with melted snow, and then they were allowed to crawl all over him at will. Even tired as he was, Thorin laughed one of his rare laughs and tended to them, apparently as happy to be home as they were to see him. 

Kili doesn't know why bells are associated with the Yuletide, honestly. Whatever knowledge of where that particular tradition springs from has been lost on him. But the sound of the bells, even as they are different from the ones heard on that night so many years ago, nearly tears his heart in two. 

For a split second, standing there listening, he almost expects his uncle to come strolling down the market row, sodden and smiling. It fades after a long moment, and Kili forces himself to remember that Thorin is dead.

Suddenly, a sweep of the markets doesn't sound so appealing. He wants to see Fili, but Fili is busy with meetings and councils, so he resigns himself to the corner booth at the inn down the lane, drowning himself in the special cider they have for the season.


	7. 7. Wrapping Paper

When they were younger, they gave each other modest gifts. In good years, these were bought from traveling merchants; even then, Fili didn’t like giving Kili something not made with his own hands. So most of the months leading up to the Yuletide were spent puzzling over which new piece of weaponry or bead or clasp Kili needed, and then carefully crafting it. 

He doesn’t want this year to be different, even though he knows that it must be. Even though he and Kili aren’t exactly speaking, hovering on the edge of civility and ignoring each other completely, he has to do something for the Yuletide.

So he spends whatever spare time he has drafting out what he should make, trying to shift things around on his schedule to find a time when he would be able to get down to the forge to get a start on it. 

He comes up with a hair clasp, much like the matching ones he and Kili have. This one, however, is grander, made of mithril and engraved with Durin’s seven-starred crown. It is a princely gift, and Fili can only hope that Kili will actually wear it, that he will be willing to replace the ones they've shared for so long. After all, custom dictated a while ago that Fili must change his, and the sight of their shared clasp nestled in Kili's mostly-unruly hair has Fili’s tongue thick and guilty. 

So he draws up his plans, carefully copying the sigil of the seven-starred crown out of the center of the fireplace in his chambers. It's a symbol he's known since birth, but he doesn’t trust himself to do it from memory alone, afraid that he’ll find some way to mess it up if he doesn’t. 

He ends up not being able to make the time he thinks he will, so it is over weeks of late nights that he gets to go to the forge. It’s not a complicated piece, but his fingers are clumsy after a day of duties (though this, he feels, is something he can /do/). The clasp comes together slowly, and after a few hours spent agonizing over the engraving, he deems it good enough to gift to Kili. 

Though it is made of a finer material, in a finer forge, and with finer tools, Fili hopes that Kili will understand the sentiment. When Fili takes his piece back to his chambers, holding out on gifting it, he finds a plain brown paper wrapping. From what he'd seen of the gifts given between the people of the mountain, their packages were wrapped in silks and colorful paper (some manufacture of the Men of Dale, to be sure). Even if the wrapping paper didn’t reflect the quality of the gift, he thinks it might soften Kili to him.

It does, a bit; not in the way Fili would have wanted, and not completely. But the pleased smile on Kili’s face when he sees the plain packaging is something that Fili hasn't seen in so long he’s willing to take what he can get. 


	8. 8. Crackers

Kili watches intently as his mother leaves the box of brightly-colored objects on the small table in the living room. He tries not to look too interested; he’d get caught if he was, and Fili had told him that the more disinterested you looked the more parents trusted you. Then the real fun could begin. 

Dis makes a soft tutting noise as something in the next room pops, some aspect of dinner making sure it was tended to, and she fixes him with a small glance before she rushes off to take care of it. 

As soon as she is out of sight, Kili reaches his tiny hand into the box and draws out one of the colorful things. It’s a tube, tied fancily on each end. After turning it over in his hands for a moment and making sure that Dis is humming loudly in the next room, he begins pulling at the ties.

At the pressure, the tube splits in half with a small pop, revealing a slip of thin, crinkly paper. Without an ounce of hesitation, he pulls at the paper, opening it out.

It's here that Fili finds him. He's older, but still not quite old enough to correct Kili’s behavior; instead, he sits on the rug next to him, and picks up one of the shed halves of the cracker. 

“Kee,” he says, and before he can ask his brother is pushing himself to his feet, giggling, and ramming the paper crown down onto his brother’s head. 

“King,” Kili whispers, still unwilling to reveal him mischief to his mother. “King Fee.”

Fili laughs at him, and goes to push the crown off his head, but his brother pouts and Fili leaves it there. He reaches for another cracker, and when their mother finds them Fili has three colorful slips of paper resting atop his head, and Kili is chittering happily. 


	9. 9. Carols

Their people have songs for every occasion. Though not quite as lilting and light-voiced as the elves in their forest, dwarves sang with voices made of smoldering coals, deep, resonating from the roots of the mountains themselves. 

There were songs kept within households, family songs that usually told of the deeds of particular ancestors. These were as many and varied as their bloodlines.

There were tavern-songs and feast-songs, a slightly smaller school of well-known songs that ranged from bawdy to meaningful. 

There were holiday songs, the songs sang on Yuletide in their feasts and dances and special, sacred songs entirely in Khuzdul for Durin's Day.

There was a song made for the loss of their mountain, and Fili knew the words better than he knew the holiday songs, and less well than his own family songs. On cold nights in their small house, it wasn't the family songs that were sung between them but the song of their mountain. 

And now, watching over the yearly feast that marks their reclaiming of the mountain from the dragon, they sing songs of its reclaiming. They sing about Thorin, and for most of them he is nothing more than a hero, a figure in a song that did great things and died for his people. 

It’s been a few years since he came into his crown, a coronation heralded by his uncle's lifesblood, and the sharp ache has turned dull, tamped down by time and circumstance. 

Fili doesn’t have a bard’s touch, for all that they praise his silver tongue. If he were to write a song about what happened in the mountain on that day, it wouldn't be a song of glory at all.


	10. 10. Hot Chocolate

The first time chocolate becomes available, it is in a trading caravan from the far east. It's a delicacy, something not before found in the Blue Mountains. Kili is young yet, at the market with his mother when she finds the caravan and hurriedly trades some of her best and most expensive weavings for some of the raw cocoa. 

By the time the day is done, Dis has quite a few essentials and a little pouch of coins at her hip. Fili has joined them, freed from his lessons, and together he and Kili help their mother carry her bounty home. 

As soon as she's finished sorting things out, she calls them into the kitchen, opening the tiny box of cocoa like it is something precious and golden, allowing each of them to smell the dark powder. It's different, smells sweeter, like it would taste as dark as it looks, but Kili is intrigued. He doesn’t stop being intrigued and won’t get out from under foot until later that night, after dinner is finished and cleaned up, when Dis sets to making what he at first mistakes for a sort of soup. 

Their mugs are wooden, polished and well-made, and Dis sets them close to the cooking fire to warm them as she prepares the milk and reduces the powdery cocoa, and before long she has a mugfull for each of them. 

“Careful," she tells them, and she sounds just as excited as they feel. “It's hot.” 

The three of them gather around the kitchen table and take small, cautionary sips from their mugs. Chocolate, Dis explains between her own sips, is something entirely found in the east. It hardly comes this far west, and even then it is expensive; in Erebor they had much of it, and as a dwarfling it was one of her favorite things to con the kitchens out of. 

They sit like that for a long while, savoring their treat while it is still warm and careful not to drink too quickly and spoil it. Dis tells them stories, almost more open than she's been since their father died about the place where she was a child, vast warm halls filled with light and laughter. 

Kili falls asleep first, small hand still curled around his mug when his head falls to the table, pillowed on his free hand. When he wakes he is in his own bed and the house is dark; he turns over, pushes the blankets down off his face and dreams of the sprawling palace that was their lost mountain home.


	11. 11. Warmth

The first time Kili kissed him, it was winter. They were curled in front of the fire for warmth. There was a storm raging outside, dumping snow on them, and they were alone in the house.

The first time Kili crawled into his bed, he said it was for warmth; he whispered it against the skin of Fili’s throat, frozen fingers working their way under Fili’s nightshirt, resting against the skin of his stomach. Kili wiggled and shifted and one of his cold feet found the space between Fili’s calves and rested there.

The first time Kili touched him, skin on skin, they were huddled in a small cave waiting out a snowstorm. It was white and cold outside, a silent, frozen world, and Fili drew Kili closer to keep them both warm, found Kili pressing him farther than he had before.

And Fili found himself enjoying it.

During the journey, they were bedded down in a cave, all of them soaked like rats. Kili clung to him in full view of their companions, in full view of Thorin, even when he'd known for a while what was happening between his brother and his uncle. But of course, Thorin never offered comfort when it could be seen by others, only away from other prying eyes (there was a reason for this, hidden away in the labyrinthine passages of Thorin’s mind, a reason that he never got to ask after).

And Kili was there, and Kili was afraid, burrowing into his side with his hands shaking, whispering about how he'd thought Fili lost to him forever. There was no time to dry their soaked clothes, so they pressed close under their thin blankets and tried to warm each other the best they could.

The second time winter came to Erebor, Fili was alone. Kili had gone back to the Shire for a time, part of the escort for Bilbo’s return and for the dwarves of Ered Luin, those who wished to return to their home. Fili hadn't heard from his brother in over a fortnight, and his last correspondence was, as expected, clipped and unfamiliar.

Fili's chambers were not cold by any means; nestled deep in the mountain with a fire constantly roaring in the hearth made it pleasantly warm. Fili couldn't feel the chill of winter in any measurable way, but he felt it keenly in his brother's absence.

He dozed in front of the fire, slumped in his armchair like a child, and dreamed that he was burning. That his skin was aflame, dragonfire and ruin, and that Kili came to him, pressed close to him and asked for his warmth until Kili was burning too.


	12. 12. Candlelight

They were to leave at first light. Thorin had gone to his own sleep hours before, telling them both to get a good night in, for sleeping on the road was fitful at best.

Kili lies awake for a long time after the lights go out, staring up at the darkened ceiling or observing the backs of his own eyelids until the dark gets too thick and he opens them again. There’s something like excitement thrumming through him, excitement and a modicum of fear that he won't admit to. 

Across the room he can hear Fili's breathing, too fast and light to be sleeping. He's been listening to it all night, but it's almost as if the thought of his brother being unable to sleep has transferred the affliction to him. 

Very slowly, Kili sits up. He stands on the rickety floorboards of the room they've shared forever and crosses to the window. There's a small table there, and by the time he’s fumbling in the dark for a match Fili whispers, “What are you doing?”

Kili doesn’t answer, only finds what he's looking for and lights a single candle. He carries it to Fili’s bed and sits at the edge, keeping a respectful distance. There are wounds that run too deep, are still too fresh for complete closeness, for what they used to do before Thorin found out. Now Kili can see the marks on his brother’s neck, no more than shadows, and feels something hard and sharp flare in his gut. 

“Can’t sleep,” he says, and his voice sounds strained. He’s trying too hard and Fili can see. 

“Me either,” Fili admits, shifting a bit so he's resting his back against the wall, legs drawn up under him. 

They don’t say much in the flicker of the candlelight that night, but they keep each other company until light starts to peek through the dark of the night sky. They stay huddled in the dying light until they have to get up, have to gear up and ride away from home. Tonight they will be sleeping under the stars, only the two of them; they will be heading south and east to a place that Kili has only seen mentioned in maps to find someone with an unconventional name. 

Neither of them admit their fear, but it’s not like they have to - when the sun rises and their mother hugs them goodbye, they are again filled with all the foolish bravery of their youth.


End file.
